“You weren’t all that nice to her,” Qhuinn muttered as the car rolled off at a snail’s pace.

Like its driver was worried that the other snowbanks might spontaneously animate and decide to retaliate for what she had done to their comrade-in-heaps.

Z looked down at his brother as Manny’s RV pulled up to them. “Are you going to die right now?”

“Nope. And did you hear what I said?”

“I got them going. That’s all that matters.”

“You have a daughter. Some night, she may need help from a human. How’d you like him to treat her?”

Zsadist refocused on the taillights as the BMW’s brakes were hit and then a turn signal—to the left, which was the correct way to go—started to blink.

“Whatever,” Z said under his breath. “Haven’t we got enough to worry about right now?”

“You think Nalla is never going out into the world on her own?”

“No,” Z announced as Manny disembarked with his Little Black Doctor Duffle of poke-and-tickle toys. “That will never, ever happen.”

As Qhuinn started to chuckle, and Manny began to rapid-fire questions of the how-are-we variety, Z decided that the night was going to get a job-satisfaction rating of zero.

Maybe less than zero.

Then again, it could have been worse. Given his history, you’d think he’d remember exactly how creative destiny could get with the bad news.

CHAPTER FIVE

Blay ran down the underground tunnel toward the Brotherhood’s training center, the clapping sound of his leather-soled loafers like a round of applause for his haul-ass. Inside his skin, he was screaming. On the outside, his rigid composure was his armor, the thing he was going into a battle with, and his rational mind was his ammunition, his primary line of defense.

Too bad fate wasn’t the kind of thing you could actually fight against.

When he came up to the locked door to the facility, he punched in a code and ripped through a supply closet kitted out with all kinds of OfficeMax. Out the other side, he scrambled by the desk, and from habit, smacked the Fuck No! button next to the computer. As the tinny voice expressed what he was feeling, he punche

d through a glass door and jogged down the concrete corridor. Doc Jane’s medical area, which had been constructed and outfitted as an engagement present by V, was state of the art. Thank God. With its fully stocked examination rooms, ORs, and patient rooms, it was the best place an injured vampire could be.

Like, for example, if one had been stabbed in the gut.

Going by the scents, Blay knew exactly where his mate was, and when he came up to the exam room, he wanted to throw his body through the closed door. He forced himself to slow that roll. The last thing he needed was for his panic to cause a golf-sprinkler bleed—

The door in front of him opened and Manny Manello, Doc Jane’s clinical partner and Payne’s human hellren, jumped back. “Oh, good, you’re here.”

“Last rites?” Blay choked out.

Manny stepped aside as he took off his white coat. “No, awake and asking for you.”

Blay’s knees went weak as he peered around the surgeon and got a load of his one true love.

“Oh… God,” he said. “What happened to you?”

Qhuinn was propped up on a gurney, his mismatched eyes bright and alert, his color good, his mouth pursed with mild annoyance… like maybe he’d picked the wrong tollbooth on the turnpike or a bad lane at the supermarket check-out. His shirt had been taken off—no, wait, cut off, given the two shredded halves on the tile floor—and for a split second, Blay’s libido responded with a hey-there-big-boy.

Then again, all that muscle and smooth skin was distracting—

Yeah, except for THAT FUCKING KNIFE protruding at a right angle to the chip-your-tooth-worthy six-pack.

Blay reached out blindly as his balance went wonky.

Manny caught his arm. “You okay there?”